All That Glitters Ain't Worth Jack
August/September by Rob Schultheis
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" Me, I was a financial doofus from the get-go. " |
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A fool and his money not only are soon parted, they usually never get to meet in the first place. I speak as an authority on the subject: I am a Guinness Book of World Records-class financial dolt, descended from a long line of counter-King Midases, the kind who can be dropped into a diamond mine with an empty gunnysack and come out the other end without a single diamond and with the sack, both shoelaces and the fillings in his teeth missing as well.
My paternal grandfather was a perfect example: as Vice President of Seattle Cedar Lumber Company, he became a minor league millionaire, only to invest his spondulix in every phony gold-mining scheme west of the 100th Meridian.
Veins of 99.9 percent pure ore discovered and then forgotten by the Chiracahua Apaches, Klondike nugget-fields hidden by 100-foot thick Alaskan ice, and mountains of seemingly worthless alluvial gravel that, thanks to some Rube Goldberg milling machine the con artists owned, would produce tons of gold once some far-sighted investor kicked in a "few hundred thousand dollars" to repair the device and get it working again. When old Granddad Schultheis finally died., my father and his sister found whole trunks full of stock in companies with names like Northern Lights Mining Technologies, Alcan Gold Corporation and Valhalla Bullion Syndicate.
What was really heart-breaking were the deeds to literally tens of thousands of acres east of Depression-era Denver; today that land was worth literally tens upon tens of millions, but the deeds were as useless as the paper they were printed on. Obsessed with his visions of gold and treasure, Granddad had failed to keep up the tax payments on the land, and it was long gone.
Even more frustrating was the family legend (most likely true, it turned out)
About Granddad and the Boeing family. Granddad Schultheis played golf every weekend with a group of other wealthy and conservative Seattlites; one of the regulars was Ed Boeing, founder of the huge aviation company.
One day, after a morning on the links, Ed took Granddad aside and asked haltingly if he might like to invest some of his money in the aircraft industry, in return for a 49-percent share of the Boeing company; the business's future was boundless, but right now investments were tight, and some added capital would enable Boeing and company to stay on trajectory for the inevitable big payday when civil aviation took hold. Politely, Granddad told him that he was afraid airplanes were just too risky a proposal; you could ride from Seattle to Minnesota's Twin Cities at 60 miles an hour, a mile a minute, on the Great Northern, so who needed to trust themselves to aluminum contraptions held together with a few nuts and bolts and flung across infinities of sky? TIMBER was where it was at, TIMBER, and GOLD, and RAILROADS to haul the stuff around.
Thanks Ed, but no thanks.
Looking back on it, I can't really complain, because I am far worse with money than Granddad S. At least he was respectable, successful, an executive with a big house overlooking the Ballard Locks, in a neighborhood that was at the time one of the finest in the Seattle area; he drove long dreadnought-like Cadillac sedans, and dressed in the best suits money could buy in Seattle, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Me, I was a financial doofus from the get-go. Rather than go for a degree in engineering, business, something practical, I was drawn irresistibly to that most impecunious of professions, anthropology; and when that showed signs of paying off in a career in academia, on the brink of getting my PhD, I jettisoned anthro for something even worse, freelance writing/journalism . . .
Hey, anyone want to buy 10,000 shares in KLONDIKE LODE MINING?
You could wallpaper your rec room with it, if nothing else. Write me c/o of this publication . . . .
Veins of 99.9 percent pure ore discovered and then forgotten by the Chiracahua Apaches, Klondike nugget-fields hidden by 100-foot thick Alaskan ice, and mountains of seemingly worthless alluvial gravel that, thanks to some Rube Goldberg milling machine the con artists owned, would produce tons of gold once some far-sighted investor kicked in a "few hundred thousand dollars" to repair the device and get it working again. When old Granddad Schultheis finally died., my father and his sister found whole trunks full of stock in companies with names like Northern Lights Mining Technologies, Alcan Gold Corporation and Valhalla Bullion Syndicate.
What was really heart-breaking were the deeds to literally tens of thousands of acres east of Depression-era Denver; today that land was worth literally tens upon tens of millions, but the deeds were as useless as the paper they were printed on. Obsessed with his visions of gold and treasure, Granddad had failed to keep up the tax payments on the land, and it was long gone.
Even more frustrating was the family legend (most likely true, it turned out)
About Granddad and the Boeing family. Granddad Schultheis played golf every weekend with a group of other wealthy and conservative Seattlites; one of the regulars was Ed Boeing, founder of the huge aviation company.
One day, after a morning on the links, Ed took Granddad aside and asked haltingly if he might like to invest some of his money in the aircraft industry, in return for a 49-percent share of the Boeing company; the business's future was boundless, but right now investments were tight, and some added capital would enable Boeing and company to stay on trajectory for the inevitable big payday when civil aviation took hold. Politely, Granddad told him that he was afraid airplanes were just too risky a proposal; you could ride from Seattle to Minnesota's Twin Cities at 60 miles an hour, a mile a minute, on the Great Northern, so who needed to trust themselves to aluminum contraptions held together with a few nuts and bolts and flung across infinities of sky? TIMBER was where it was at, TIMBER, and GOLD, and RAILROADS to haul the stuff around.
Thanks Ed, but no thanks.
Looking back on it, I can't really complain, because I am far worse with money than Granddad S. At least he was respectable, successful, an executive with a big house overlooking the Ballard Locks, in a neighborhood that was at the time one of the finest in the Seattle area; he drove long dreadnought-like Cadillac sedans, and dressed in the best suits money could buy in Seattle, Minneapolis and Chicago.
Me, I was a financial doofus from the get-go. Rather than go for a degree in engineering, business, something practical, I was drawn irresistibly to that most impecunious of professions, anthropology; and when that showed signs of paying off in a career in academia, on the brink of getting my PhD, I jettisoned anthro for something even worse, freelance writing/journalism . . .
Hey, anyone want to buy 10,000 shares in KLONDIKE LODE MINING?
You could wallpaper your rec room with it, if nothing else. Write me c/o of this publication . . . .
Rob Schultheis is the author of seven books. His most recent is The Devil's Teahouse,
published this summer.
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